The present invention relates to a detaching roller apparatus in a combing machine.
A combing machine includes a nipper device, a top comb, a combing cylinder and pairs of detaching rollers as main components. While the nipper device holds a lap drawn from a lap feed unit, the combing cylinder combs a tuft of the lap thereby to remove short fibers from the lap, thus forming a fleece.
While the nipper device is moved forward to move the fleece toward the detaching rollers, the detaching rollers are rotated reversely to pull out the previously drawn fleece so that the front end of the fleece held by the nipper device and the rear end of the previous fleece received by the detaching rollers are overlapped. Subsequently, while the detaching rollers are rotated forward to receive the following fleece from the nipper device with the previous fleece, the top comb combs the rear end of the following fleece.
The combing machine usually includes eight combing units. Each combing unit has two pairs of detaching rollers to form two rows of such detaching rollers with one pair forward and the other back. Since the detaching rollers are rotated reversibly to receive the fleece, the driving device that drives the detaching rollers is subjected to an extremely large load. In particular, when the combing machine is speeded up (or when the rotational speed of the combing cylinder is increased to 300 rpm or higher, for example) to improve the productivity, the driving device is required to develop a high torque.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-1843 discloses a combing machine that is intended to drive at a high speed the detaching rollers requiring a high torque. The combing machine of the Publication includes two detaching rollers. The reversible rotation of the detaching rollers is synchronized with the rocking motion of the nipper frame of the nipper device. Each detaching roller has a shaft at positions adjacent to both ends of which reversible servomotors are provided for driving the shaft. The servomotors are synchronized. The shaft of each detaching roller is driven via gear trains provided between the motor shafts of the servomotors and the shaft. Each gear train has an idler gear.
In the Publication wherein the two shafts of the two detaching rollers are driven by the four servomotors, each detaching roller is driven by double torque of the servomotors, so that the detaching rollers are driven at a high speed.
In the combing machine disclosed by the Publication, the two servomotors are provided at positions adjacent to both ends of the shaft of the detaching roller to drive the detaching roller by double torque. When the combing machine needs to be speeded up and, therefore, the driving device is required to develop a higher torque, however, there is a need to increase the size of the servomotors located at positions adjacent to both ends of the shaft of each detaching roller.
Since the driving device needs to cause the detaching rollers to repeat the alternate forward and reverse rotation, the increase in the size of the servomotors causes an increase of the inertia of the rotating detaching rollers, which calls for a larger torque. Therefore, the combing machine of the Publication cannot meet the speed requirements of the combing machine.
The present invention is directed to providing a detaching roller apparatus in a combing machine that increases the driving force for the detaching roller while preventing an increase of the inertia of the driving device.